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By Craig Roussac 10 March 2011 – Electricity use in Sydney office buildings can more than double in extreme heat, but responsive management can keep a lid on greenhouse emission, research by conducted by the Green Buildings Alive project has found Growing... 
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The federal government has promised a tax break program for green buildings worth up to to $1billion. How the program will work in practice may change following a call for public submissions, now closed. Following are details of original proposals for... 
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By Ronald Wood 10 March 2011 – The claims for green plants in buildings are that they help to improve indoor life. From a single plant on a desk, container plants throughout the space, planted foyers, to landscaped atriums and bioclimatic skyscraper... 
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By Lindsay Pelser 4 May 2011 – I read with great interest your story on the delay of tax breaks for energy upgrades.  This could have made pink batts and solar subsidies look like spilt milk. I think it is good to scrap the tax breaks as it would... 
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By Jane Jose 4 March 2011 – It’s been a summer to remember. A summer that saw Queensland go from beautiful one day, perfect the next, to disaster for the next few weeks. Speaking with characteristic calm and control we heard from the Queensland Premier,... 
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1 March 2011 – Grocon this week said it would aim to match its pace-setting carbon neutral Pixel commercial building in Melbourne with a 10-storey carbon neutral residential apartment building built from a high tech sustainably sourced laminated... 
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By Michael Mobbs 3 March 2011 – In April 2004, the hypothesis that the Gulf Stream is switching off received a boost when a retrospective analysis of U.S. satellite data seemed to show a slowing of the North Atlantic Gyre, the northern swirl of the... 
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By Andrew Aitken,  Green Building Council of Australia 9 February 2011 – The Green Building Council of Australia is inviting industry to have its say on the development of a new Green Star assessment methodology to rate the operational performance... 
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By Michael Mobbs 17 February 2011 – Australia’s councils are perhaps the most ignorant and contemptuous of indigenous culture of any part of our society. Councils manifest their damaged psyche unintentionally in their development approvals every... 
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By Michael Mobbs 2 February 2011 – What has growing native pastures and weeds and trees on farms got to do with soil, carbon, governments, red tape, scientists and a tree-planting non-government body called Landcare? Let me tell you a couple of... 
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By Michael Purtell Letter: 31 January 2011 – Well here I am – it has been nearly 12 months now since the Green Loans Scheme fell over, or should I say literally crashed – and now that the Green Start housing program has also been scrapped, ... 
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by Michael French, partner Queensland, Norton Rose 21 January 2011 – The floods affecting Queensland, Victoria and NSW have been described as unprecedented and their impact on the economy will indeed be extraordinary.  Early estimates place the... 
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LETTER – 20 January 2011 – I was told last Friday (14 January) that the Glebe Post Office will close as “planned” on 4 February and that stuff was already being moved out. The senior management of Australia Post don’t care about the needs... 
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By Michael Mobbs 11 January 2010 – Coal is Australia’s biggest boomerang. With every shipload of coal we send overseas we import more frequent and extreme droughts and floods. Our coal comes back to Australia in the form of heartbreaking storms,... 
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By Michael Mobbs 23 December 2010 - “The underlying problem is confoundingly simple: agricultural methods that lose soil faster than it is replaced destroy societies” – David Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations I saw white... 
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By David Baggs, ecospecifier 13 October 2011 – FAVOURITES: Green marketing has increased dramatically in recent years as marketeers have become more aware of the increased importance consumers are placing on the effects of their purchases on their... 
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By Joel Quintal 20 December 2010 – Australia is consistently referred to as one of the global leaders in the sustainable built environment. However, green buildings come at a price and when is the Australian acceptance of “green” going to pay... 
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By Simon Carter Here are 12 things in the sustainability space which inspired me this year: China becoming No 1 in the world for wind power capacity and dominating in PV production and solar hot water installation California’s Proposition 23... 
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By Marcus Spiller 10 December 2010 – One of our assignments as town planning students at Melbourne University in the 70s challenged us to devise a strategy to put “urban policy on the front pages of the newspapers.” It was the time... 
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by Peter Fagan FAVOURITES – 3 June 2009 – According to a recent study by researchers at James Cook University and the Australian National University, the Murray Darling Basin, which drives the rural economy of eastern Australia, has lost approximately... 
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By Joel Quintal 2 November 2010 – The UK closely watches sustainability initiatives around the globe and is not shy about throwing its hat into the ring to try out something new. In the first instalment of a two-part series, Jones Lang LaSalle’s... 
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By Mark Willers What is the value of a green building? The issues is starting to become top of mind for many investors and valuers. Here CB Richard Ellis senior valuer Mark Willers steps through the current thinking. 19 November 2010 – As... 
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By David Wilson 22 December 2010 - Last year some of Sydney’s most prominent arts personalities debated whether Sydney had lost its cultural edge at the Creative Sydney debate. Moderated by Peter Carr from the Sydney Development Agency, the speakers... 
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By Robin Mellon, Green Building Council of Australia 19 November 2010 – The discussion about green roofs and their benefits has been gaining volume in Australia; Green Star certified buildings such as 30 The Bond in Sydney or the Pixel Building... 
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By Paul Mees 16 November 2010 – Melburnians once needed to visit Europe to be embarrassed at the gap between our public transport and the best in the world. Now we have the Internet. The authority that runs Zurich’s public transport system... 
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A recent forum outlined the benefits of sustainability on the bottom line for companies including global giant GE. In this report forum host CarbonSystems’ Dan Gaffney outlines the key messages. 19 November 2010 – Four speakers. Four sectors.... 
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By Michael Mobbs 5 November 2010 - Look with me now, if you will, at snapshots of two places where some people are seeking to use resources sustainably, one in Australia, the other in forests around the world, which are being logged for cities everywhere. Here... 
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By Robin Mellon 3 November 2010 – At last Australia is getting serious about energy efficiency and climate change mitigation. On Monday, the new national Commercial Building Disclosure program came into effect, meaning that now most sellers or lessors... 
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Reports – 20 July 2010 – With the initial phasing in of mandatory disclosure laws commencing in October, Global real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle has issued a report detailing all the major implications of the new laws to help... 
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Favourites: 28 September 2010 -In this second article of a series of three, Anthony Szatow and George Quezada explore what new business models capable of realising value from distributed energy may look like. The final article will examine the conditions... 
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